| Romantic Circles

1110

the amiable Falkland Sir Lucius Cary, 2nd Viscount Falkland, was one of the principal Cavaliers in the
service of Charles I. He died at the Battle of Newbury on 20 September 1643. His name
and exalted notion of honor were, it would appear, used by William Godwin as models
for the hero-villain Count Ferdinando Falkland of The Adventures of Caleb Williams.
Today Falkland's fame is sustained by his serving as one of the subjects of Ben Jonson's
enduring tribute "To the Immortal Memory and Friendship of That Nobel Pair Sir Lucius
Cary and Sir H. Morison," one of the first true odes in the English tradition.

The somewhat surprising emphasis on royalist values in this paragraph is suggestive
of a historical politics far removed from that elsewhere insinuated into Frankenstein
(see, for instance, II:5:16) or shared by Mary Shelley with her father and Percy.
These references are perhaps best explained within the context of the novel William
Godwin published about a month before Frankenstein appeared, Mandeville: A Tale of
the Seventeenth Century in England. The protagonist of that novel is an ultra-Royalist
who, as his cause deteriorates, retreats further and further into morbid self-obsession.
The emotional dynamics of Mandeville, if not the portraiture itself, are consonant
with the psychological makeup of Victor Frankenstein.

1109

Fairy-land This is the mature figure who at the age of nine wrote a fairy tale that captivated
his friends (I:1:11). Clerval responds in part to the many legendary associations
of the Rhine—from the siren-like Lorelei to the Rhine-maidens with their trove of
gold—in German folklore.

1108

external nature This sentence suggests that, in this novel, nature as a principle, as is often the
case with Enlightement materialist philosophy, is carrying something of the freight
associated with the deity in earlier religious formulations. Nature is acknowledged
as an enveloping principle of reality, and Clerval's feeling for it marks both his
largeness of mind and disinterested perspective.

1107

excitements to his vengeance Walton is referring to Victor's own acute sense that the spirit world that guides
him is vindictive (III:7:19) and exonerates him from normal codes of worldly justice
or, indeed, responsibility for his acts as a member of society. Yet, the emphasis
here on "his vengeance" suggests that Walton's apprehension is crucially different
from Victor's own and serves to underscore the delusional, paranoid mentality that
is now Victor's habitual mode of thought.

1106

examining my past conduct The plot of Frankenstein, with its insistent narrative mirrorings and doublings of
character, seems always to be engaged in reexamining its own conduct, a process that
contributes to the reader's skepticism about the truth of any single utterance by
its protagonists. Here, in an epitome of this structural idiosyncrasy, we are told
that Victor, after recounting his biography and then rewriting those parts of it he
felt Walton had not succeeded in capturing in the manner in which he wanted them represented
(III:Walton:4), has rethought the terms of his entire narrative and has revised it
once more. That last revision, however, we will never read: the synopsis here presented
does, however, differ in salient ways from the account we have been asked to accept
as the truth.

1105

Evil thenceforth became my good

This is a direct citation of the conclusion to Satan's soliloquy upon Mount Niphates
in Milton's Paradise Lost:

Farewell, remorse! all good to me is lost;
Evil, be thou my good. (IV.109)

1104

Evian Evian was, even in the eighteenth century, renowned for its waters and, though P.
B. Shelley upon visiting it found little to recommend its inhabitants, it would seem
a natural destination for a honeymoon couple from Geneva.

1103

Everywhere I turn We are quietly returned to the present tense, or at least to the telescoped time
intervening between Elizabeth's death and the present scene of narration in Walton's
cabin.

1102

everlasting hatred If we can believe that the Creature really used such language, then its very indistinguishability
from Victor's, even down to the extreme hyperbole of the adjective, is another indication
that at this late point in the novel, the two of them have become a single entity
whose overriding passion is hatred and whose life force is provided by death.

1101

the events That Mary Shelley principally wrote Frankenstein, and certainly its third volume,
while living in Marlow, near Windsor and not far from Oxford, might logically have
suggested to her the value of inserting its local scenery and history into her novel.
More pointedly, her own tribute to her father, in dedicating her novel to Godwin,
would have been underscored by her including scenes associated with his most recent
novel Mandeville, centered on the English civil war in the mid-seventeenth century.
For this politically-minded group of writers (Godwin, Mary Shelley, P. B. Shelley),
the civil war had been, first and foremost, a conflict of ideologies pitting aristocratic
against republican values. Although a century and a half past, its political resonanace
was far from muted in a reactionary political climate like England's during the Regency.
Thus, the political undertones of this choice of scenery on Mary Shelley's part are
unlikely to have been in any sense innocent.

That said, there is another salient reason for the British setting of the earlier
chapters of Volume 3, which is the simple fact that the novel is designed for an English-reading
audience rather unaccustomed during the years of the Napoleonic Wars either themselves
to travel abroad or to respond with much interest to a continental setting as sweeping
as that embraced by the first two volumes. In its final volume Frankenstein goes rather
out of its way, as if designed according to formula, to embrace all three parts of
the United Kingdom.